Franco Zeffirelli

'An obsessive, mischievous genius': actors pay tribute to Franco Zeffirelli

Brooke Shields, Robert Powell, Jeremy Irons and Fanny Ardant share their memories of working with the virtuoso directorShares

¡Comments43Chris Wiegand

Tue 18 Jun 2019
Chris Wiegand

‘You’d have thought that God had just walked down the aisle.’ … Brooke Shields with Franco Zeffirelli in 1981. Photograph: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Brooke Shields on Endless Love: ‘It was: more, more, more’

He was very tough but in a loving way. Franco was always wanting and expecting more from me. You want your director to have enough faith in you that they urge you to be your best. Not all directors are like that. Then there was another side to him that was very playful – there were in-jokes and many meals together. He would eat risotto con piselli and flatten out the rice to carve a perfect profile. He wouldn’t eat risotto without doing it.

Fanny Ardant: 'Tears are like diamonds, you can't waste them'

The French actor on being Truffaut's muse, why she never married, and the feminine side of Gérard Depardieu


Interview by Jonathan Romney
Sunday 15 June 2014 06.07 BST

In your new film, Bright Days Ahead, you play a retired married woman who has a guilt-free affair with a younger man. Is the film a manifesto for holding on to sensuality?

It's a hymn to the present moment. What makes the present moment? It can be a magnificent bath, or getting into bed, eating salad or drinking Château Margaux… All very modest things – not a cruise to the tropics, just anything that helps you live. What really matters is love, but if you're having problems of the heart the only thing that helps you fight that is the senses. Or reading. I've spent a lot of my life in hotel rooms, and it was always books that got me through.

Fanny Ardant / ‘I need to love, not to be loved’

Fanny Ardant

‘I need to love, not to be loved’

French actress receives honorary award in Athens 

By Yiouli Eptakili

LIFE 20.04.2015

“You have 20 minutes at your disposal. Fanny has another interview after that and then we are visiting the Acropolis Museum,” said Fanny Ardant’s agent seriously, sticking to his role of journalist “tamer.”

Following a firm handshake, I was left alone in the small Hotel Grande Bretagne suite, wondering whether or not I should open the heavy curtains and let some light in. Before I had time to decide, 66-year-old Fanny Ardant walked in. She looked rather tall and as I took a quick look at her elegant black pumps I realized this was not the result of high heels.

Fanny Ardant

Fanny Ardant interview: 'Poor Dominique Strauss-Kahn’

Fanny Ardant loves wild men, pities Dominique Strauss-Kahn – and made Antonioni cry. Benjamin Secher meets one of French cinema's most uncompromising stars

FANNY ARDANT
Photo by Eric Rober

Fanny Ardant: 'I suffer profound despair – I see things noir'

Fresh from directing Gérard Depardieu in the role of Stalin, the French star is now staging Sondheim’s Passion in Paris. She talks about the art of pretending, embarrassing her children and the power of love

Fanny Ardant says she is very good at pretending. And not only on stage or in front of a camera. The French actor is lounging in the foyer of the Châtelet theatre in Paris where she is directing her first English-language musical, Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. She is laughing, her eyes sparkling, her hands – fingers heavy with chunky silver jewellery – are flapping, wringing and pushing hair from her face.

Alain Elkann interviews Fanny Ardant

Fanny Ardant

Fanny Ardant: The Ultimate Diva

A short interview from the archive with the actress and director Fanny Ardant, who speaks fluent French, Italian and Spanish and learned English while filmingCallas Forever (2002). She is a really passionate reader, as was her former companion François Truffaut. They both loved Honoré de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Arthur Miller and Henry James and Fanny likes Julien Gracq, Jane Austen, Elsa Morante and F. Scott Fitzgerald.